Was/is (geometric) abstraction a retreat from overt content in the face of feelings of oppression?For some people no doubt.

Or is it the dominance of an outlet for people with no talent for representation?(My favorite line in the Warhol dealio - he had no talent for narrative - like Julian schnabel does. Ha! Like Robert Longo Does. Ha! Its not talent, you morons, its psychology=personality=TASTE)

You could write all kinds of narratives. Contexts are multiplying like tribbles. Its pandemonium out there. Remember HYPERLINKED NARRATIVE? Choose your own adventure!

Once someone attempted to insult me by calling me a Mannerist and I ate it up. That's what this is: eating up forbidden and forgotten artistic standards and doing it with skill. Good the way Leda and the swan and Laocoon are good. Fashionable the way Schiaparelli and early surrealism were fashionable. http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/classics/students/Ribeiro/Laocoon.jpg can't touch it for skill or stones

This piece seems a little over achieverish. Kelli I think you’re right relating it to Mannerism but it seems Barnaby isn’t quite comfortable with the cloaks of the masters yet kind of a “Mannerism of Mannerism”. Also these works are pastel drawings which limit the amount of texture and scale they could achieve. Nice draftsmanship, and I kind of like the flushed cheeks and moist reflection off the skin, like every one just stepped off the treadmill and slipped in to costume.

There was a whole art movement called the “Anachronistici” came in on the heels of the 3 Cs and the New Germans, mostly Latin artists like Carlo Maria Mariani, Alberto Abate in Italy, and Gerard Garouste in France. They were appropriating the mannerists and classicists too but more ambitiously.

Regarding the Andy Fest, I think every one has ether O-D ed or is having Andy jones’. Can’t believe it, he’s been dead almost twenty years and folks are still pissed off about him or in love with him. St. Andy’ laughing.

Seething, blushing, the figures are ripe, I just wish there was more that relates them to the background, not just a vacant backdrop. I think the Mariani comparison could be debated, though their not mining the same vain, Neo-Classic vs. Rococo Mannerist, which is more decadent?

Ambitious art work cost money, and takes time. Artists who want to make ambitious work need money to make it People who spend money buying art are the artist’s friend, people who spend a lot of money are good friends. Being able to make the kind of work you want with out having to go hungry, priceless.

comparing this to Pontormo is such a stretch......This little pontormo sketch contains so much mastery and farsightedness.....

like how fresh was it that Jacopo was on that anime influenced shit like half a millenia before the fact?

one of my main problems with this whitfield images is he's having such a hard time getting the various visual references to mesh: collaging photos by way of pastel can get disconcerting to me, like the way the Yasumasa Morimura looking head sticks out in a way oblivious to the rest of the body, along with the ringling barnum and bailey lion coming outta leftfield,the grapes, etc.

I actually see this not so much in relation to past practices but correllating to a painter like Yi Chen (showing at Boesky)....but I think the technique is working better for Chen, though perhaps Barnaby is more honest in his attempts; Chen, in revealing his process so obviously may have an easier time with the task.

Kalm James I agree with you. Somehow the equation collectors= marketplace comes up. It's not true. I think art fairs are probably the main thing making everybody so money obsessed. Norman Dubrow donates most of what he buys to museums and is always promoting artists he likes, many who are underrepresented or women. For most artists money equals time to work not money. Even being able to have just a part time day job helps a lot of artists. And collectors are the least sexist least racist part of the food chain- some of them are good people who actually think about these issues.I really like this painting. There is something openly decadent about it.Hernan Bas in comparison seems sort of reticent and closeted ( pardon the pun).

Appropriation - you could say imitation(mimesis) through collage..becoming a critique. I think this is critical in a way Yi Chen is not.

This seems more influenced by amateur weirdness.I think this falls under thrift store kitch (velvet elvis) in a way.

I dont think being influenced by anime is much to crow about unless its the tentacle sex stuff. Anyone got a link to that? I'm not an expert.I think a lot of people drew off the TV - I know some of my friends did. Transformers and before.They werent crtitical neither.

Cha Mannerism in it's heart is always about androgyny. Rococco: the feminine. Neo-classical: young boysNo-Where it has come to my attention that these missives were sent to you by my elderly tiger stripe cat Chunky.Apparently she:-enjoys luscious painterly brushstrokes-hates fagsI had no idea she felt this way and apparently only tolerates me because I feed her.

i have really different taste from most of you, i think this painting is stupid, ugly (in a bad way), and overworked, very photoshoppy, and a pathetic version of ignorant latterday fake mannerism that hasnt even the juice and freshness and desire of the original. yuchhhh.

Peeps it's less a question of taste and more a question of respect. You seem to feel comfortable personally insulting the intelligence of people who don't share your taste ( me ) by saying that I don't understand abstraction but you make no effort to treat work outside of your taste fairly. I had a graduate degree from Yale at 22. I understand a lot of things and can appreciate things like the really good Wendy White show that fall outside of my taste. We all need to show some respect for fellow artists and make an effort. Hey which major art dealer is openly racist and casually makes bigoted remarks in front of his staff? Answer: I can't say without getting his employee in trouble but this is the crap you should all be hating not art.

I think theres a problem with a system that requires the artist to humble themselves to gallerists, or people in general, so I'd like to use my cat as an intermediary. A familiar. How cool would a raven be? Two caws for new work. Five hundred for pay me you cocksucker. It could peck the eyes out of critics.

sometimes its hard to decode meaning without a lot of reading or writing.

I usually misread stuff, which is looked on as flippancy, apparently, but is really just me trying to make something interesting for myself. Isnt that what art is? a discursive process? A conversation between the subject and the object?Who else is there? I like artists who dont care about interpretation or even encourage that, like Rauschenberg. Critics call it ambiguity.

Joe Coleman lacks ambiguity and there are a lot of words so if you read them all you will get the painting like you get a comic book.

This painting has no words, but now I understand it might have some unambiguously coded homosexual stuff.

Is there something inherently, unambiguously gay in avant guard art?

WHere was I reading that the art world is conservatively (reactionary) liberal, having taken the streets and consolidating its power in institutional might.

I thought this was kind of hipocritical - art is supposed to be amoral, apolitical, and asexual, according to Gombrich's art through the ages. The good stuff rises to the top - like youth and gallery directors.

Thomas - If you actually want jpegs of my work leave your email on my raven.

One of the problems that I have with our current infatuation with gender and queer (actually any identity, physiological or political) interpretations is that they are trying to read their own special interest agenda into cultural milieus that were totally different from where we are now. Basically reading history in a way that fits our personal ideas in 2006, not the reality or the truth of the times in which they happened. Was being a gay Greek in 400 BC different than being a gay Italian in 1595, or gay New Yorker in 2006? The whole question of gayness has evolved so much in the last fifty years that it’s a whole new thing (a social construct). Human sexuality is one complex and screwed up wacky and dark and brilliant deal. No orientation is safe as “milk and cookies” read Genet. I won’t disparage any group, but like humanity in general there’s a lot of “strange” fascinating stuff going on and no one is totally innocent. Welcome to real life.(We won’t talk about the “gay mafia” that’s alleged to run the Chelsea art world)

They didn’t even use the word “art” much before the 13th century. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t making art (or at least what we call art) but that it existed in another realm. Much of what this is about is language and not officially “art”. The stinkin French Deconstructionism. People can theoretically interpret things through their own lenses but in might only be relevant to themselves not society in general.

Regarding the background: I could see putting in a horizon line or the edge of a wall, something that would secure the composition to the edge of the canvas (forgive my cubistic inclinations). There are numerous devices that could add to the rhythm, give further areas for allegoric props, coloristic and lighting incidents more figures etc.

Kalm James I like to throw queer theory into the mix because it breaks up the male female dichotomy and allows us to have a discussion with each other without breaking into opposing camps. Some of the ideas associated with the term ( art as counternarrative, irony and playfulness in art. rejection of normalcy) could easily apply to straight artists like Larry Rivers or Zak Smith. Read "the Queen's Throat" and "Opera or the Undoing of Women" back to back and tell me which critical vantage point is more friendly to art. Homoerotic content in art has been buried over time but really so has all erotic content. I'd like to see the the portraits of bathing women Hans Memling was commissioned for but can't because they have been lost.That being said orientation is used to marginalize some artists in the same way critics focusing on Pollock's alcoholism marginalizes him.

I think Kelli makes a very good point. To understand or try to understand something outside ourselves requires a respect and fairness to "other". At first, when I saw this painting, I was immediately non plussed, but after a few attempts to really understand, I am strangley engaged in trying to find out what the artist is after. I am puzzled. I like puzzles.

This website has helped me to appreciate "other". I am very thankful for that.

KJ you asked so: historically in the classical world male homosexuality was tolerated so long as one married eventually. In ancient India gay people were grouped with old people and kids ( non child bearing people). The Old Testament was neutral on female homosexuality but not male ( the term almah usually translated as virgin probably meant lesbian). However trans people have always been feared and denigrated. Read Lucian's "the Eunuch". The modern definition of gay as an identity not activity arose in the late 1800's and you have a point that it doesn't mean exactly the same thing over time.

I think all modern Gay theory is open to question by anyone that takes a look at who is used as the “historical” standard. Much Greek thought comes through Plato and Socrates and we know how they swung, it all depends on who is the voice of the society. I also think that many people are marginalized right to superstar status. A sober Pollock, not piss’in Peg’s fireplace is just another zlub. A straight Capote is just another Saturday Evening Post short story writer. We’ve turned personal preference into Freak Flags, (biting off mouse heads) another branding, another thing that divides, classifies and categorizes humans. Maybe people want to be club members (members only). Like I’ve said, I think painters and artists are part of a tribe, but I don’t bare a grudge against non artists, hell that would be most of the world. Also I wouldn’t want to start a bunch of academic departments based on “masculine theory” yuck (Bald middle-aged whit heterosexual conservative artisy theory) Might work for therapy but I don’t know if it would make anybody a better painter, not that there's anything wrong with that.

KJ I guess there are always different ways ideas can be used. I think I find some of these concepts useful because they are disruptive and cut across gender traditions. I guess they could be used to create an alternate normalcy or oppositional heirarchy instead of challenging heirarchy.But that would be less fun.And Karl Rove uses identity politics.

Maybe we all know less than we think we do. Maybe the child is right - the emperor has no clothes. Maybe all the intelligentsia are too impressed with themselves. Beauty, after all is in the eye. God, the salon is so hot and stuffy. Someone please open a window. P.utto, in the words of the great Partridge Family, "I think I love you."

for anyone interested, Larry Rivers gave his friends blow jobs at parties and he fucked his couch in the living room as a young man, but who hasn't fucked furniture. I'm not really feeling the artist club/artist love thing. The intellectual game will keep us haters. Stay skeptical of eager beavers..

kalm james said... I’m all for cutting across traditions. I’m also all for challenging any dogma or “accepted wisdom.” It seems the gap between a snappy idea and the time it becomes an “academic practice” has been shortened to nano-seconds. I even like disrupting theories before they have a chance to become stodgy curriculum fodder.

Again most of this relates to language not visual art, but I am putting “The Eunuch” on my reading list right below Arshile Gorky by Hayden Herrera, (I’m on page 202 of 727) “Cultivated Impasses” by Max Kozloff,”The Complete Writings of Clement Greenberg Vols.3 & 4”, “Varieties of Visual Experience” by Edmond Burke Feldman and “The story of the Armory Show” by Milton Brown. (I ordered Invisible Dragon from England but their having trouble locating one.) I hope to get to it some time in 2008.

Wow I didn’t know that Karl Rove was a painter.And I did watch Querelle, Fassbinder’s last movie last weekend interesting, weird. Very 1983.

I knew Larry for twenty years, worked for him for a little while and was in some shows with him. He never blew me. too busy blowing his sax. I did love him though. A real crazy cat.

I think this painting is harboring nuclear weapons.Or, is it that they've already gone off and this is what it looks like sometime after fall-out?--kind of shocking, and makes one think, do we really want to do that again--have we not become more responsible human citizens who can live in peace and settle our differences through oil.

Whatever, the feline sucks! nwm i bought my young son a warhol jigsaw puzzle, because out of all the JSP's available at the time AW was the only one that had positive visual appeal.

I like the quality of the painting(pastel, whatever) in the woman's face but a lot of this paiting has an icky painting on velvet feel. Maybe that's intentional, but it sure as hell isn't pontormo (maybe closer to tintoretto cause the blue-black underpainting he used).

Kelli, in classical Greece men did not have to get married to justify a man boy relationship. ... example of a modern cliche applied to a different time, culture etc, which sorta sums up the ignorant charm of identity politics and other flavors of essentialism.

Wade I was sort of lumping the classical world... Greece and Rome together to keep things brief. While generally more tolerant than ours it is hard to determine just how tolerent these cultures were particurally towards the receiving partners.Seneca has a character saying:" I simultaneously submit to both a man and a woman. Yet I also play the man's role to someone else's disgrace"Claudian in Eutropium says in reference to recieving partners "one whom the male sex has discarded and the female will not adopt"So while male homosexuality was accepted men viewed as feminine were on a somewhat lower footing than men perceived as masculine or dominant.I think it is interesting that some of the classical art historical imagery ( putti etc.)Whitfield uses has become kitsch and he is using the kitch references to allude to the earlier meanings.

poppy thx. i am amazed at how it angers people, he walked some form of tightrope line.

ttg, for some reason this quote came to mind:

"Art negates the conceptualization foisted on the real world...The truth of works of art hinges on whether or not they succeed, in accordance with their inner necessity, to absorb the non-conceptual and the contingent. For their purposefulness requires the purposelessness, which is illusion...Aesthetics cannot hope to grasp works of art if it treats them as hermeneutical objects. What at present needs to be grasped is their unintelligibility...By its mere existence, every artwork, as alien artwork to what is alienated, conjures up the circus and yet is lost as soon as it emulates it. Art becomes an image not directly by becoming an apparition but only through the counter-tendency to it...The subject only becomes the essence of the artwork when it confronts it foreignly, externally, and compensates for the foreigness by substituting itself for the work...Artworks win life only when they renounce likeness to the human...Actually, only what does not fit into this world is true."

Pdog you are right that power and class, slave and free as well as male and female were the pertinent categories governing sexual relations in the classical world. However pederasty in Athenian Greece was a mutually beneficial institution which was pretty consensual. It involved elaborate courtship rituals and forcing oneself on a boy (upper class) who was not interested was considered an act of hubris and punishable. However women and slaves were sort of fair game and men desiring a receptive role as adults or young men pursuing older men were at least frowned upon.I'm sorry if going off on this tangent was a distraction.I posted that link about Cupid and putti way up above because it directly relates to this painting.

Nowhere man,thanks for posting that quote,It sums up in a nice tidy way much of what i've been thinking about lately..Since i am a few sheets to the wind - you get much love....:)*o*

Larry Is Also The Man no matter what he spent his days blowing or not blowing..tip of the hat to that guy, the self proclaimed grand dad o pop.- or was it the re introduction of representational?whatever, read his book, very entertaining...

I’d bet that in ancient Greece life expectancy was somewhere around 28-30 years. As recently as 110 years ago right here in North America the average person had to walk 18 miles a day just to survive (working crops, caring water, herding cattle etc.) Considering the lack of law, the constant attacks from thieves, disease, hunger, infant mortality, battling war lords, nasty animals, putrid food and just bad stuff, I don’t think the ancients had that much time to lounge around thinking about who they were going to have sex with. Life back then was not like an HBO mini series, or some Frankfort School or Decon’s classroom theories. Ninety percent of the populace probably couldn’t read or write. The accounts we have received are from a very tiny, elite privileged and probably not “average” citizen’s viewpoint.

That’s also why their artistic achievements are doubly impressive too.

Too bad andy didnt live to be able to do a portrait of paris. Though of couse we can all imagin it.

I always liked AW's portraits of the 80s. I felt they were quite critical, far from fawning. The critique was buried in the glamour and so he beat the swells at their own game. Not only that he took their money but he exposed them. It was part of the whole thing that they were too dumb to notice--or too cruel to care.

It is a very passive aggressive tactic--particular to strait women and gay men. No marginalization intended, just facts.

I have to say I hate men with an intense and bitter passion. And I find the fact that I desire them a nightmare but it defines my life. Now that's content!

just waiting for the day somebody makes something in stainless steel that fits in a harness. Ice water bath.Talking about the Greeks made me sad. I guess people just look for something positive and consensual in the past. And some of their love poetry was nice.

None of the stainless stuff has a wide enough base. Sounds like a trip to the emergency room. http://rainbowrope.com/all.htmlI swear by the 40$ probe. Notable for the slight curve. Affordable enough for Christmas presents. Beats the crap out of a scarf.About classical love poetry :Ovid is totally overrated and meanspirited. Talking about vain women dying their hair and it falling out. Just petty.

I find most peoples vision of ancient Greece or Rome is framed by film or tv.

Years ago when I was in school, I was working in a computer room and the discussion was on Rome, and this person made a comment about how in films on or about ancient Rome the actors seemed to all have english accents.

No-Where thanks for all the tips. Ovid can be summed up: rhyming coupletswomen like grapesthey also like rapeAnd all the stuff about sexual positions to make yourself look thinner leaves me to believe he was reincarnated in the Paris Hilton sex tapeP dog you are too rightHey nobody answered my question. Can art use kitsch to reference the earlier meanings of kitsch images like Cupid??

Zip: The classical world had a love hate relationship with androgyny. Christianity had a hard time cleaning up self castration "eunuchs for heaven" and all that being so closely based on the cult of Cybele Attis Magna Mater. They turned gender bending into asceticism.

The springtime rites involving castration were turned into Easter and the stigmatic wounds. For the first time androgyny was available to women through the body modification and eating disorders of medieval saints. In the ancient world there was wide variation between castration practiced on captive people and sex workers ( Egypt was the worst) and the voluntary procedures lower middle class men underwent to obtain the diplomatic and governmental positions available to Eunuchs. Later the Castrati who were valued for their singing voices by the Church were made using gentler methods in a warm bath with opium.Drugs!

Just returned from a visit to Barnaby’s show and was both pleasantly surprised and disappointed at the same time. First off “P.Utto” the piece under discussion here, to my eye wasn’t one of the better works in the show. It lacked the strange kind of twisted narrative potential of some of the other pieces. All the works were pastel on paper which for Whitfield looked like a white heavy print-paper on which he lays in a prematurea tone with pastel (as apposed to working on tinted papers.) His portraits of friends and his mother are sensitive and accomplished and a couple of works like “Dermoid (Tiny Dancer) some cat in a stripped robe, a dancing a peg-legged baby with an adult face in front, and “Oh Shatter The Mask!” Barnies mom near a reclining woman with a blond baby pissing over her shoulder, kinda gets to the weirdness that distinguishes the work. Two large pieces were a bit less convincing, due partially to the empty fuzz-tone backgrounds, reminded me of cheap photographs one has taken at K-Mart. But I applauded the risk of moving beyond the standard scale that most people think of when viewing pastel drawings. If Whitfield wants to continue expanding his scale, I’d suggest he check out some of Richard Merkin’s large drawings, note especially his handmade paper and abundantly thick use of the medium, R.B.Kataj’s expressive draftsmanship and especially the looseness and abstract painterliness of the late works of Degas

cooky, Merkin is a fantastic artist who had his heyday in the late seventies early eighties. Some people thought his work looked too much like Kitaj’s but he developed his own thing. The large pastels are great, very chunky with pounds of pigment scraped onto the surface of rugged handmade paper. His reputation is as something of a dandy, snappy dresser in a “Lost Generation” sort a way. Heard he hangs out with Tom Wolfe and that literary crowd. Now you’ll usualy see the work as illustrations in the “New Yorker.”

And kelli, I think ovid was a little more witty than your summation...and anyone who considers love a type of warfare doesn't exactly have rape on his mind.Naturally, I prefer Catullus and for the Greeks, Alcaeus:

Hebrus, you flow, the most beautiful of rivers, past Aenus into the turbid sea, surging through the land of Thrace. . . and many maidens visit you to bathe their thighs with tender hands...

One more thing I've noticed is with all the focus on pederasty the accounts of Greek homosexuality leave out marriage between adult men ( which did exist ) and intercrural sex which was pretty common and might not have brought up the top/bottom issues within their society.

"Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce."When did Plato meet George Bush????

That quote, I guess its the translation makes Plato sound a little too modern. Although I doubt the powers that be are concerned with passionate relationships, nor do I think the popular forms of homosexuality today have much resemblance to those among the elite males of greece.

Really, if al gore and carl levin were sexual partners... now that might be something. But the fact that the slaves fool around too much seems less a real concern than an excuse to arouse the passions among the reactionary rabble.

The ugly underside of that quote is that women were considered second class citizens and not suitable for friendship ( filia) or eros and disdain for people outside of the elite and outside of Greece. Everything has two sides. So when we resurrect ideas from the hstorical past we have to remember the other meanings and difference in context. The same with the art historical past. I kind of wish we had talked more about that ( art historical references) but oh well.

Not meant to be insulting, and yes! as a short person I am pro-short. I just wondered. You seem to know the artist, the artist used a model, it kind of looks like you, just a random thought. Kelli, you see insults everywhere. why so defensive & insecure?

Well perhaps you are used to being referred to as a chick. I tend to think of it as derisive. Calling a painting chafed and flayed and painful to look at was an insulting remark don't you think. I know several of the artists on this blog and when I really don't like or understand their work I am silent.

I'm not censoring you but I doubt you would have the balls in person to:A) call me a chickB) remark on my height ( I'd be looking down at the top of your head )You have such good manners now that this isn't anonymous.

Chick-Lit. A hyphenated word. If you say it as a spondee, accenting both syllables equally, it's a very hip term - confident and cool: this is "lit" by chicks. Read it.

If you say it as a trochee, accenting the first syllable, you get a term even more reductive than the slang term Chick that replaced Broad and Babe in the evolving spectrum of demeaning endearments. What you get is a baby chicken.

If you remove the hyphen and say it as one word real fast you get a more powerful meaning; this is especially true if you ignore the first three letters.

Finally, you might be thinking of those tiny brightly colored squares; if you put enough of them in your mouth, you'll get a wad of chewing gum.

The colon after Chick-Lit indicates a definition is about to be presented: Chick- Lit is Postfeminist Fiction. Whew. But then you wonder, what does that mean? "There is no hyphen: this fiction is not just feminist, it's postfeminist. Unfortunately (or not, as we may determine later), the prefix post has several meanings: after, subsequent, subsequent to, behind, posterior, posterior to, later than. Although the differences between some of these meanings are subtle, we wonder: is this book after feminism or behind it? Is it posterior to feminism, or is it subsequent to feminism, which implies more of a relationship? Or is post supposed to do what so much language does naturally: evoke all the meanings?"

The last post "quoted" [don't know how those things disolved], suggests there is no settling differences when 'difference' 'wants' the same--differnce as various positions within and wider than the frame.I took a long look through Barnaby's url and found it very interesting, though, the image up at painternyc, is, not so interesting, though, on B's blog, it becomes interesting again. That's how it goes--we become interested, then uninterested, then interested. There are various strategies to keep interest up, but they, as many here have mentioned, frame frames.

Thye say knowledge is wide enough, but never wide enough to be inclusive, and that's the problem!

Hey Brent I always find you interesting in a similar way that Zip is interesting. Postfeminism is problematic because it is so disparate the term is misleading. It has also aquired the popular meaning - something occuring after or in oppostion to feminism. It includes such disparate figures: queer theory, libertarian feminism, poststructuralism. nutcases like Camille Paglia in opposition to poststructuralism, the sex positive feminism which reacted against the unholy alliance between the Meese/Reagan reactionary camp and antipornography feminists and finally feminists who are basically just old-fashioned liberal feminists on some level operating out of an old tradition of liberal humanism ( I'm including Butler, Dorris Lessing (nonfiction), Jeannette Winterson). I belong to the last camp myself and frankly there isn't really anthing post about it. Mary Shelley didn't publish anything in 1995.

right kelli, know who you are, the rest you find out. I was kind of in the stream of Irigaray--early work and late. I had a sister as personal tutor, and then a friend of Itigaray in her Paris circle. I couldn't get it all, especially on coffee meets: you kind of have to let go of things and then pull it all together, very French way, poetic, structural, but organic. Anyway, I learnt human kindness at political work.

Smart and funny Painter, the grapes here and the grapes in the paintings you didn’t post by Fientuch. Fientuch’s meaning is in there being too few. I’m not sure what they are about in Whitfield’s work. Edible baby?